Constants and Variables
by strawberry0909
Summary: Booker and Elizabeth share a brief moment that hints at a deeper connection between them.


**Here we go – another story!**

 **This one-shot is set in Columbia, where we witness a brief, yet bittersweet moment between Booker and Elizabeth. I hope you 'Bioshock'-fans out there enjoy it!**

 **Dreamy-vision-like experiences (or whatever you'd like to call them, I obviously don't know my quantum mechanics as profoundly as two certain redheads do) are written in italics... and whoever recognizes the three voices interfering with each other at the beginning gets an imaginary cookie.**

 **Constants and Variables**

 _Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt… I won't ever break the circle, I'll be lucky if I can dent it… Mr. DeWitt… The debt must be paid… Oh, look, there's little Anna lying in her crib… Funny, how the double meaning of this verb is so oddly fitting here… Tut-tut, there he goes again, nose bleeding all over the place… He'll get it all over his nicely starched collar… Well, aren't you a fashionable one… Fashionably concerned, if that's what you mean… Mr. DeWitt… Bring us the girl and… Mr. DeWitt… Bring us the girl and wipe away… Mr. DeWitt… Wipe away the debt… Mr. DeWitt… The Debt… MR. DEWITT!_

When he came to, he winced at the sharp pain in his right hand. Upon seeing Elizabeth's worried face, he bit back a groan and clenched his teeth.

"I've told you before. Please – call me Booker."

She let go of his injured hand after tightening the blue cloth she had bandaged his wound with.

"Yes, I forgot. Sorry – Booker."

Hearing his name with a catch in her voice, he grunted and stood.

"That's unless you prefer the professional..."

She interrupted him eagerly.

"No! No, that's not it. I just... I need to get used to actually being with people, I guess."

She shrugged it off with a small laugh, a sound so heartbreakingly innocent and sad that Booker felt his stomach turn.

"We better get going."

He reached for the shotgun that had been propped up to the wall next to him while he had been asleep. He checked the barrel, made sure the weapon was loaded and finally swung its loop around his chest, carrying the gun on his back – safely stored, but always at the ready.

When he reached for the revolver at his side, Elizabeth raised her voice again.

"Do you really need to do that after every pause?"

He ignored her, checking the personalized gun.

"I mean, there were books on probability in my tower, you know. What are the odds that after such a short phase of non-usage..."

She broke off, watching him clean his revolver intently.

"Did you learn that at Wounded Knee?"

He didn't even have to look at her. With but a moment's hesitation, he grabbed her by the collar of her sooted blouse and held her at arm's length. He didn't look into her eyes. He seemed to address something beyond her.

"Yes. I did. And it did me good. At Wounded Knee, at the Boxer Rebellion, and at fucking Pinkerton's. Is there anything more you'd like to know? Huh? Anything else you couldn't find in your books?"

She shrieked faintly, her blue eyes wide with fear and surprise.

He stopped short as he sensed a, by now, familiar feeling that still managed to subdue him every time. His nose was bleeding again.

He let go of Elizabeth and wiped his face with a handkerchief from his pocket.

Elizabeth tentatively stepped forward, her hand raised in an attempt to calm him, maybe even caress him, hold him.

Booker raised his uninjured hand and faintly mumbled into the kerchief. Elizabeth could still hear him as loudly as if he had shouted the words at her.

"No. Stop. You're right. You're just a job after all."

He threw the bloodied cloth away and holstered his revolver.

"Let's keep this professional."

They continued through the streets of Columbia, the breathtakingly beautiful exterior of which, as they had learned by now, was home to rotten minds. Their silence was different somehow. Elizabeth felt that it had lost its mutual consent and its sense of a shared, yet silent comradery. It had turned into something else – an equally silent, but perceptibly hostile sizing up. If it hadn't been for that atmosphere, she might never have mustered the courage, or cruelty, to ask the question.

"Who's Anna?"

She caught him off guard with this once more. His carefully constructed barrier had just been renewed after her earlier breach, but he was still raw, the slowly healing scars now being hauntingly scratched open. This time, he did look into her eyes.

She immediately wanted to open a tear, a tear to a world where she hadn't asked, doesn't and wouldn't ask Booker this question. His green orbs stared into her blue ones, as time seemed to come to a halt.

 _There was a flutter of recognition in the almost electrically charged air, a fleeting image of a calm river and a priest standing in it, a baptism – there was a giant metal bird, tenderly cradling an impossibly small child in his cruel claws – there was a hulking and heavily armed figure, readily being led by a tiny girl holding its hand – and there was a lighthouse._

 _There were millions of them._

"You..."

Booker's voice was husky, as his mind struggled back to the there and then. He could taste blood on his lips yet again.

"You remind me of her. I... I mean, it's..."

He stopped. There were no words to tell Elizabeth that the mere act of looking at her, seeing her, not seeing her, but another person, a different Elizabeth, a different Anna – how much all of this tortured him, actually and physically pained him.

She stepped closer towards him and carefully held his injured hand with both of hers. He recognized how small they were compared to his. He stifled the tears boiling up behind his eyes and put his other hand over hers.

"Whoever wants to get at you – they better make damn sure I'm not breathing anymore."


End file.
